The Vendage – Oct 11th

After yesterday we’re more committed to a simple day for today.  That is, of course, after tossing aside initial plans to go to either Graulhet  (market town, and beer making, but  70 minutes away) or Castres (one star town, a half hour away).  Maxine humors me (a lot) as I switch what I want to do several times.  Finally, in what we hope is a fit of logical rationalization, we decide to stay here. 

After all, we are in the wine region of Gaillac.  Rain is coming this afternoon.  The grapes, which are on the vines on some fields, and missing from others we’ve past, will all soon be gone.  So, let’s go for a walk.

I should mention that our house is, literally, on the Gaillac wine trail.  At the road at the base of our hill, the sign says “this way to continue driving on the Gaillac wine trail”, and we make that turn each time we come home and park 100 yards up.  So, we’re feeling very good about our location vis-à-vis wine.  But, it’s a bit of a tease.  Aside from the construction-sized trucks that go by a couple times a day, we see no one picking grapes?

Directly across from us a one lane road leads to Chateau Gayssou, the nearest winery at less than ½ mile.  We head that direction.  They’re making wine!  There’s a guy supervising a machine crushing grapes.  We peek in the barn and see large fermentation tanks. 

We continue down the road and see 2 guys and 2 of the construction trucks.  They’re emptying the contents, 2 saddle bag like aluminum containers that straddle the truck, into the dump truck.  We see grapes and grape juice flow for a couple minutes.  We wave to the guys, and their dog comes over.

French dogs have very wiry fur, not at all elegant or easy to pet.  But the dog is so eager that we do.  And one of the men tells us that the dog really likes to be petted.  So, partially to be polite and partially because it’s fun, we do.  Then we continue our walk with the dog, who I’ve arbitrarily named Tatou, following us.

 

 

We come to realize that he’s there to supervise.  He dashes up ahead.  He trails behind.  He crosses fields and woods to either side of us.  But, he’s never that far away for our nearly 2 hour walk.  His companionship is very welcome to us.  One more picture from our last time in Gaillac -- Cassie amidst the vines:

Near the end of the walk we see the 2 guys again at a different field of vines and realize that there are no grape pickers visible anywhere because the truck with the “saddle bags” is actually an automatic picking machine which drives over the top of the rows of vines and somehow picks as it goes.  Here are some pix of the process, in order:

 

 

Simple lunch.  A nap.  A call from Bill to make plans for the weekend.  A quick dash into town for a loaf of bread  (OK, obsessive) and a chocolatine.  And now, home for the evening with my glass of Pastis and Maxine’s glass of rose.  We’ve determined that we have enough of both to get us through the weekend.

P.S.  While we've never looked up the word "vendage" every time it's used it is in conjunction with the idea of the time of year when the grapes are picked and crushed, so we use it the same.